Intelligent network services are becoming more and more prevalent, especially with the continued expansion of communications services and the proliferation of mobile phones (e.g., smartphones) and ever expanding suite of communications and mobile phone applications and services. Service providers offer a wide variety of network services, over intelligent networks, such as video services, audio services, Quality of Service (QOS) services, emergency services, and the like. Such emergency services may comprise personal emergency response services (PERS) or government emergency telecommunications service (GETS), which may be accessible, for example, on a priority basis. With many such network services, it is necessary for the service provider network to authenticate a user as being a subscriber or otherwise permitted to access a given service, such as through the entry of a user identifier/identification (ID) and password. Authentication is especially important in the case of high priority services, where the service bandwidth is prioritized over the traffic for other non-priority services. Unfortunately, however, in the case of priority services, such as the GETS emergency service or the PERS service, authentication can be overly burdensome and time consuming in situations where the user may be preoccupied with critical issues, and requires relatively instant access to the service.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for an effective and reliable way to authenticate users for access to network services without burdening the user with authentication tasks prior to granting access to the required services.